


Back Tracking

by Tizian23



Category: Jimmy Page - Fandom, Led Zeppelin, Robert Plant - Fandom
Genre: Album: Led Zeppelin II, Alcohol, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Band Fic, Established Relationship, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Insecure Robert, Jimmy the Producer, M/M, Music, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Robert, Recording Studio, Rock Stars, Rock and Roll, Sex Drugs and Rock and Roll, Songfic, True Love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-16
Updated: 2020-05-08
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:49:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23677168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tizian23/pseuds/Tizian23
Summary: The boys are mixing LZ2 in LA.But the magick is fleeting so far Jimmy thinks.Complications arise. Robert loses his nerves.Will he lose Jimmy too?
Relationships: Jimmy Page/Robert Plant
Comments: 30
Kudos: 39





	1. Vodca and Rosewood

**Author's Note:**

> Its been in my head for a while now... I need it out there.  
> I like record studios.  
> Its where the magic happens.  
> usually  
> 🖤

“Stop! Stopstopstop…no no no no NO”  
My backing track cuts off. Your voice through the speaker sounds more desperate with each single No…. it rudely snaps me out of my trance, here in my recording box.  
I tried to get into it for some hours now but the right mood just won’t come. Separated from my band trapped behind glass. Overdubbing fucking sucks. You hate it. But I think I hate it more. Carefully opening my eyes I hardly dare to look whats going on behind the wide double glass window of the studios recording room.  
By the last No your head hits the wide mixer, barely avoiding a few pointy controllers, long forearms slowly cross over the back of your head, face completely hidden under the fluffed ink cloud of locks. You are complaining I reckon, yet again not satisfied with the best I’d deliver. Your shoulders are shaking as though you are crying, without raising your head from the mixing desk you wave about your left hand pointing at me with one finger then with the thumb at the people behind you lingering in the back on couches and chairs next to you on the desk. Bonzo, sitting next to you rolls his eyes and glances up at Jonsey standing on your other side, who carefully shrugs and seems to think about saying something but then decides not to. Pulling off my headphones I turn to the door to see what the drama is all about this time.Your head pops up and reaching over to the reversing key you spit into the mic : 

“Stay where you are, Robert, I don’t need you here.”

Stunned by your harsh tone and the flinty look you give me I stop in my tracks and sit down on the nearest chair. I blew it I think. This is the end. You won’t let me have another go after all the other takes. I didn’t give you want you wanted. The right sound just won’t come and I‘d hear your voice get more and more tired and softer and softer the more you lost patience with me.  
Swivelling around in your chair you stand up and lean against the desk, looking at the couch that seats Cole, a few girls with big sparkling eyes, tiny skirts and lots bangles on each wrist and our pot dealer and his buddies. There are some technicians and a few roadies also sitting on the floor next to the couch, all their eyes are on you now. You might as well be telling them how fed up with me you are and wonder if Terry is still available as a stand in. Helplessly staring at your back I start counting the thin dove blue stripes on your crisp white shirt.  
By the way your back tenses I can say you are talking and gesturing. At me and the floor and then pointing behind you at the mixer and your acoustic 12 string leaning in the corner. Your hands are clenching to fists, hinting at the immense fury you are obviously in. And then you actually raise your voice, loud enough to hear the indistinct rumble even through the soundproof glass. Covering my ears with my hands I drop my head between my knees to drown out the sound of heated loud voices overhauling each other, feeling painfully reminded to hearing my parents fight at night in the kitchen; well aware its because of me and my failures 

I slip off the chair to the carpeted floor crawling over to the little department paravented in the studio that holds your equipment, guitars, towering amps and the theremin.The bows and various wha-wha pedals lined up in straight lines. All cables meticulously curled up. The neatness is calming and peaceful; its like a quiet room in a very loud house.  
Your Dragon Telecaster leaning on the wall. It‘s more a lucky charm than that you actually play it these days.. But you brought it over and put it up just to see it while recording. Leaning against your guitar amp I run my finger down its smooth rosewood neck, bumping over each single fret, trying to imagine how much love, blood and sweat your fingers stroked into it over the last years. You painted the dragon onto it yourself you told me, its intricate red and green scales and the tiny sliver of sky-blue delicately wrapping along the soft polished, wooden curves.  
Its been abandoned though, just like me; so I might as well keep it company and wait til the storm blows over .  
Yes I have read the reviews too. They hate us at home- or better they hate me. The way I sing and dance and swagger round the stage and look at you when you make your guitar moan with the bow. And here we are… the guitar you don’t play anymore and the boy who won’t sing in your band anymore. Witnessing our own demise from behind soundproof glass. HUH, I think I just heard doors slam, not just one but basically each single one all down the Long hallway outside the recording studio.  
I am not even wondering about being left behind, clearly they’re heading down to the Rainbow Room for a celebratory knees up. Not every day a band agrees so much on expelling their rubbish singer for a better one.  
I sit there contemplating my next steps and how I am gonna get my stuff from the hotel room I share with you. It will be ONE royally uncomfortable situation and I don’t want you to see how crushed I really am. I am not even sure I can just head home now. Am I somehow bound under contract to stay? Should I have read what you gave me to sign? I’ll throw myself into the Los Angeles River if I have to stay and watch someone else sing my songs. Hopefully they did not lock the doors behind them when they all left. Its so quiet now that I hear the lights switch to night light in the hallway and a moment later the light in the glass box goes dim as well. So it’s just me and your dragon now.  
I wallow in my misery for a while, not able to get up nor to figure out what to do. There is half a bottle of 7Up on the floor next to my mic that I pull over and after a little flash of genius I fish around in your velvet lined guitar case for the flask you keep in there for all eventualities. Thank Goodness, it’s full. What I also find in there is your favourite polkadot silk scarf that I slowly pull out like a magician from a top hat. It smells so much like you that it hurts a bit in my tummy. Nonetheless I wrap it around my neck and get to the task of drinking the sodding pain away. After the 3rd huge mouthful of vodka I start feeling less raw. I turn the smooth heavy flask in my hand, feeling it warm with my body heat in a way only sterling silver does; pressing my thumb on your engraved initials like into an open wound. Delicate baroque flowers encase fragile milky glass; it’s part of a set of three. The golden lighter you lit up for me last year in Birmingham, the flask in my hand and a more massive silver lighter that I suddenly feel heavy in my pocket.  
It’s engraved as well.  
Like me.  
I have your name all over me; sometimes I feel marked.  
How am I gonna get rid of that now?  
I drop the flask together with that thought, like it turned hot in my hands  
Twisting myself a bit I extract a pack of smokes from your bottomless guitar case and then try to angle my lighter from my pocket. The pack is dented and ripped. I feel so tired and sad. Since I can’t have a tea a fag will have to do. Of course now the gas in the lighter is empty and I have to shake and curse it a few times before I can coax a small flame from it.

“ Chris is going to skin you if you smoke in his studio.” I almost jump out of my skin at that, dropping the ligher and tossing over the empty 7up bottle. The unlit cigarette tumbling from my lips into my lap.  
When I look up I see you standing a meter away from me, barefoot, a long coiled up cable and headphones in one and your jumper in the other hand. Your shirt is untucked, your hair carelessly smoothed down making individual perfect curlicues stand out of the black cloud around your pale, tired unbearingly pretty face.  
“ May I ask what’s going on here?” You say, your voice soft, almost as if you don’t know it already.  
“ Well getting ready for the news, I guess.“ I sound petulant I know it but I don’t care.  
“ News? Of the good or the bad sort?” You ask, now sounding genuinely curious. If you weren’t in the the process of breaking my heart I’d admire your talent for acting. I barely see your smile in the dim light as you step closer and look down on me for a moment. “Is there something left of the magic potion?”  
“ No," I lie though my teeth,” and even if, I’d not share it.”  
“ Evidently. Dare I ask why?” I wish you would stop being so nice.  
“ I need it more. Jim, stop pissing around and just do it.”  
“ Excuse me?! That’s not very nice. What are you talking about, Love? And don’t Jim me.” You want it to really hurt. Calling me Love in this situation is like twisting the knife twice. When did you become so cruel?  
“ Aren’t you here to tell me ….” My voice breaks. Sure, after it failed me the whole day thus railing you up to no end, it fails me now again to prove why you are about to do the right thing. So I clear my throat and try again.  
“ You are here to tell me we’re through, aren’t you?”


	2. 7Up and Sins

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The boys are mixing LZ2 in LA.  
> Magic is floating around.  
> Complications arise.  
> Robert loses his nerves.  
> Jimmy acts even more weird than usual.  
> Robert pawns all his treasures to find out the truth.  
> Strange things happen every day....ahem night.

The B-Side

“ Through? HmYes… unless you can take more.” 

You pull a funny face with that, totally oblivious to the storm this off-handed comment causes in me. I fail to understand why you seem to be so hellbent on not just chasing me away but crushing me under your plimsole while I try to crawl off. You step closer and sink into a crouch with an exhausted sigh. Leaning in you lift the cigarette I dropped out of my lap, slip it between your goddamn perfect pink lips, slightly pursed around the filter like a kiss as you reach for my lighter. But where the flame was reluctant for me it fails you completely. You drop it back into my lap giving me an accusing look. 

“Bugger.. Why is it empty?” 

“ Maybe it's broken… must be the only thing that ever failed you. Or wait: Maybe the second one. And anyway why do even your presents bear your own initials?”

I throw accusation back at you whilst I save my treasure from the floor it fell to and hide it in my hand protectively. My fingertip gently stroking the engraved JP in the smooth silver.

“ Shouldn't it be my name? My letters I mean?” I know I am not making sense. 

I am hanging my head, trying to deflect, not to cry now that I see you so unmoved by the end we are facing here. The cigarette still unlit between your lips you move a bit closer, stroke my hair out of my face with your precious fret hand, gently lifting my chin with a long finger to look into my eyes. I can see the sliver-thin of black enclosing your glacier-greens and I wonder what you see in me. Am I to you as cloak and dagger, as undecipherable as you are to me sometimes?  
Without breaking our eye contact you pull your own lighter from your pocket and light the cigarette; the small flame steadfast and precarious, close to skin; heat and light amid us. Pinching the fag between two fingers you flip it around into my mouth and slip the lighter in my other hand. 

“ Look at it.” You say, taking away the finger holding up my chin. Obediently I drop my eyes to my palm sheltering your lovey, snap a flame on just to hear its Ping. The smooth, polished gold, the way it sings a perfect note when I open it. It's warm. From being in your pocket. Your bodys' heat. Feeling it bleed out into my hand makes me want to howl in pain. When I turn it between nimble fingers the letters imprinted on it's back say RP. My eyes flick up to your face, serious but patient. Halt the clocks, this means something and I want to know what.

You wait for the lightning to strike. My brain sluggish, hampered by the vodka and your eyes so keen on me, tries piecing together what you are telling me here with words unspoken. I look down in my lap. One treasure in each hand. One silver, one gold. The intricate engravings are so similar you'd almost miss the difference. Well, I certainly did. I exhale a cloud of smoke and before it fades away I almost miss the moment when you drop from crouching in front of me into a crosslegged sit between my long spread legs. I try to remember when ever I have seen you barefoot outside your home, a bed or a beach. And I come out with…nil. Never. Earlier you and Bonzo kept making fun of me for the various states of undress I employ to get in the right mood for recording. Jumpers, shirts, t-shirts, tiny t-shirts, open shirts, open tiny shirts, no shirts at all, singing barefoot, taking my belt off. You said that it would be rather complicated to recreate this on stage if I take off any more items, but I saw the hungry, intrigued glint in your eyes when you turned away.  
So now you’ve come to me. Barefoot, your shirt untucked and barely buttoned. I can see a hint of honey milk skin and your belly button. You pluck the cigarette from my mouth and take a deep drag, And while I wonder if it tastes like my lips you exhale a smoke ring, it’s more a swirling elipse. Your disappointed little pout makes me smile.

" Jim...Jimmy, why are you here ...and not at Rainbow Room with the others?" I can hardly believe I mustered up enough guts to ask you.

" Why should I? You are here." You look up to me from under your lashes and push your hair back behind your right ear. " Nowhere else I'd rather be right now. Misery loves company. Can I assist you anyhow?" 

With that you close in and lean your forehead on my shoulder, your intertwined hands resting chastely in your lap as if you don't know what to do with them. I look at your sweet exhausted profile, with closed eyes, shadowed by dark smudges of lost sleep and your lips wet blush, slightly parted you look like Renaissance painting. You could as well be sleeping but there is this racing pulse in your neck. I let your advance happen, speechless and flustered by the display of innocence and beauty in a nutshell. I am not fooled by it though. You know this is important. And I know with mind-blowing, soul saving certainty that you are not here to send me packing.  
At once I can't keep my hands not to myself anymore. You are so close to me and you let me see you like this: tired, quiet, disorderly and having lost control. Things aren't going your way and you've come to ME to make it better. I feel like the king of the fucking world. I wanna jump up and yell out of the windows into the balmy Los Angeles night sky "Jimmy's here and he's with me and he wants me to comfort him because he's feeling blue. You see that, the moaning and groaning lot of you? Fuck you all and your whining about how I am a wailer, "blue eyed soul", too posey, too prissy, too slutty, too fruity, too much a cock rocky diva on stage. Cos Jimmy Page is here with me and he thinks I am the one to make all the good things great." In reality I am barely breathing and my hands flutter over your head, it's supplicant bow into my neck, shoulders small enough to fit into the palm of my hand, the soft curve of your chin; your backs long graceful slope; not daring to touch you to not break this spell. It’s so quiet in the room that I can hear you breathing. Hard and fast like you've been running up a stairway and it utterly betrays your flaunted quiescence. You are almost panting.  
" It's golden like your heart, you know. That's why..I want to feel it in my pocket. Close. Warm. Heavy. Sure. With me. Like I hope your heart is for me." It's a whisper. But I heard it. I can't believe you hand me all this. Your softness. Your confession. The affirmation. The affection you just admitted. The ultimate letter of deposit of your trust in me. I am blessed with a lap full of Jimmy and a heart full of love. Finally I brush your hair aside and settle my hand around the base of your slender white neck. Now I can feel the fast flutter of pulse that I looked at earlier. It slows down under my hand together with your breath. 

" I didn't yell at you, you know that, right? I'd never. This racket behind me was driving me round the bend. Cole and those girls. They were so loud. The endless clangs of their bangles and one of them was laughing all the time - I couldn't hear you anymore." It tumbles out between hiccups. I stroke your hair. You normally don't like that but now you not only let it happen you move into the caress. Your eyes are closed.  
" I hated how they didn't even pay attention to you." You add with a distinct frown.

I pick up the flask from behind me and offer it to you in a faint attempt to convey my stunned placability and win time to figure out how to handle all this.  
You laugh quietly when feel me moving and see my offering, a soft huff of warm breath over my chest. You take it, thumbing it open with your right hand without looking. When you finally raise your head from your hiding place in my shoulders cradle and our eyes meet I solicit you with a smile. You take that too, with a demure titter before you down what was left of the vodka, pulling a very cute snoot and shivering. I can see the soft dark peach fur on your forearms stand up at once. Hard liquor literally raises all your hackles for a split second and I am sure you have no idea how endearing that is. Slithering closer you climb in my lap, hooking your naked ankles behind my back with this funny hypermovability that only tall, skinny boys have, that nobody ever sees on you because even in casual company you move unhurriedly elegant with grace, inconspicuously and like you are bethinking how you want to be noticed by others. I realise you drop all pretence with me and are shy about that. There is a thinly veiled crave in your eyes now, yet playful and amiable, preserved for intimacy and protected surroundings. So I take my chance, carefully turn my head to run the tip of my nose over your slightly scruffy cheek to peck the corner of your mouth. There is vodka and smoke on your breath and it makes me feel raunchy, grown up and wild for you. Our lips touch and the tip of your tongue travells over my lower lip, wetting it you suck in a slow luxuriating breath, following the cool air with a searingly hot kiss, your small, always so innocent looking mouth wide open over mine. I am always floored how your kiss is so dirty while you uphold such butter-wouldn't-melt-air about you. How can they not all see what a naughty boy you really are. It's so obvious. You hide it so badly yet so insistently that no one ever asks further. You wrap a deceivingly slim long arm around my neck with surprising strength, pulling me closer with a demanding noise of excitement.( Yes Baby I know you actually lug around your amps and travel cases, luggage and even furniture when you think no one is watching... you are not the dainty whisper of a boy that most people take you for and I love it. It translates so very well into your manners between the sheets. And that was one of the biggest surprises about you initially I have to confess.) Your other hand is deftly unbuttoning my shirt, you are slowly rocking into me and that's when I finally clock how urgent this is...how urgent you are. I press you close to me with one arm in the small of your back to support you while I pull my legs in a cross sit underneath your little arse and slip my other hand into your shirt stroking your chest with the back of my fingers to tune you a bit to my touch. You break the kiss drop your head back and moan so loudly that I wonder if you closed the door properly. Your hair tumbling down your back over my hand, teasing me to grab it and pull you to the floor.

" Do you want me, babe?" I whisper against your skin, licking your neck, tasting salt and smelling faint hint of the French rose water you use for aftershave. 

" Yes, Yes Yes please, please." 

Goddamn, I haven’t heard you say please for quite some time. Lately you had to keep it together so neatly in the frantically busy times there was no time to for you to get loose and easy.  
So let me take you down, my glorious love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OH look there'll be three parts.  
> Seems, the muse just won't be satisfied with two.  
> And who am I to say No to him... no one can, right?  
> 💋★


End file.
